September 21, 2020

Citizens Hearing on the Environmental, Social, and Economic Impacts of Plutonium Pit Production and Its Alternatives: October 7, State Capitol, 1-6 pm

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What: Citizens Hearing on the Environmental, Social, and Economic Impacts of Plutonium Pit Production and Its Alternatives
         *This will be an outdoor, socially-distanced, masked, covid-safe event.*
When: Wednesday, October 7, 1 to 6 pm
Where: New Mexico State Capitol, East Side
Who: Elected and appointed officials (invited), concerned people like you and I
Why: There is no opportunity for public discussion, nor is any analysis planned, of the local, regional, statewide, or national impacts of the huge proposed LANL expansion, and LANL's new industrial plutonium mission(s)

Dear New Mexico activist leaders –

First, a very sincere "thank you" to all who have endorsed the Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production! If you haven't, please do!

We've been awfully busy here but we haven't kept in touch very well with all but a few co-conspirators. It's time to fix that.

We last wrote on the first of the month, when DOE released its Final Supplement Analysis for the 2008 LANL Site Wide EIS. Our press notification: "DOE concludes no EIS needed for vast expansion of Los Alamos nuclear missions, including plutonium bomb core factory -- altogether, the largest project in the history of New Mexico."

This resulted in a fair bit of press locally (e.g. "Feds close door on new LANL environmental study," Santa Fe New Mexican) and, via the Associated Press, nationally (e.g. "US Officials: No New Environmental Study for Nuclear Lab, NYT).

The next day, the Department of Energy (DOE) issued two Amended Records of Decision (here and here), which together cement its choice to create a plutonium warhead core ("pit") factory at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

Far from being over, the fight is just beginning. Last week we sent invitations to over 100 congressional staff members to a government-only workshop on pit production, which we are organizing later this week in conjunction with Princeton University.

On the 9th, we presented to the legislature's Radioactive & Hazardous Materials Committee (slide deck at the link with some new information) and on the 14th to an active Democratic Party group (Indivisible Nob Hill). This latter talk began with a plea for patience with those on the other side of the aisle, whose cooperation is needed to get anything useful done. From Thomas Frank’s “The People, No:"

(Lawrence) Goodwyn also warned against a politics of “individual righteousness,” a tendency toward “celebrating the purity” of one’s so-called radicalism. If you wish to democratize the country’s economic structure, he argued, you must practice “ideological patience,” a suspension of moral judgment of ordinary Americans. Only then can you start to build a movement that is hopeful and powerful and that changes society forever.

If you’re not interested in democratizing the country’s economic structure, however, individual righteousness might be just the thing for you. This model deals with ordinary citizens by judging and purging; by canceling and scolding. It’s not about building; it’s about purity, about stainless moral virtue. Its favorite math is subtraction; its most cherished rhetorical form is denunciation; its goal is to bring the corps of the righteous into a tight orbit around the most righteous one of all.

What swept over huge parts of American liberalism after the disaster of November 8, 2016, was the opposite of Goodwyn’s “ideological patience.” It was a paroxysm of scolding, a furor for informing Trump voters what inadequate and indeed rotten people they were. The elitist trend that had been building among liberals for decades hurried to its loud, carping consummation. (pp. 228-229)

…What is certain is that the liberalism of scolding will never give rise to the kind of mass movement that this country needs. It is almost entirely a politics of individual righteousness, an angry refusal of Goodwyn’s “ideological patience.” Its appeal comes not from the prospect of democratizing the economy but from the psychic satisfaction of wagging a finger in some stupid proletarian’s face, forever. (p. 241)

We've been laying the groundwork for resistance in other ways as well, to be brought forth later.

The main reason for this note is the above heads-up. Mark your calendars!

We will record your testimony and deliver it to our congressional delegation, the Governor, and other decisionmakers. We will invite them to come but it definitely wouldn't hurt if you did so as well.

During and especially after the event we all will be able to safely visit with some of our activist friends we haven't seen face-to-face in months.

Background information will be provided and we will be on hand to answer as many questions as we can.

DOE has tried to build a pit factory here several times. It may seem all-powerful, but the agency faces daunting challenges in that effort, some of which will be even harder to overcome than ever. DOE can be defeated, if we work together.

Very best wishes to all,

Greg, Trish, and Lydia for the Los Alamos Study Group